Immigration lawyers are carrying personal security alarms for fear of being physically attacked amid a ‘growing climate of hostility’ they say is partly fuelled by ‘dangerous’ Home Office rhetoric.
With a general election looming, the government’s “anti-migrant attacks” will only intensify, warned Pierre Makhlouf, legal director of Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID).
“We’re going to have to be really careful as we get closer to the election that we don’t get attacked as a result of this rhetoric,” he told the Standard.
Mr Makhlouf added that violence against asylum seekers and refugees in the UK this year had “made it clear to immigration lawyers that the government’s rhetoric is leading to violence”.
He said that BID, which represents clients in their deportation appeals, had received threatening phone calls, letters that had to be referred to the police, and had been accused of “helping rapists and murderers”.
Another immigration lawyer and partner at Leigh Day, Jacqueline McKenzie, sat in her car “petrified” it would “blow up” after an email containing a “misrepresentative” dossier on her from Conservative campaign headquarters was leaked to newspapers in August.
Ms McKenzie said she was targeted as a “left-wing lawyer” in the dossier, which was “underpinned by racism and misogyny”, after she represented an asylum seeker who had been the victim of torture.
The asylum seeker was about to be deported from the UK to Rwanda under the government’s controversial scheme.
Ms McKenzie said she had reported the dossier to the police as a hate crime and said she was still watching her back as she left the office.
“The kind of vitriol I’ve received is mainly on social media, but I’ve also had things come into my inbox at work. One person said, ‘You deserve what’s coming to you,'” she told the Standard.
“I had the cutthroat emoji [sent to me] on Twitter and that person was banned.”
It comes just months after the prime minister claimed that “left-wing lawyers” were blocking efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, and the home secretary, Suella Braverman, wrote to Tory party members claiming that “an activist group of left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour party” had opposed the government’s attempts to curb small boat crossings in the Channel.
Terms such as ‘left-wing lawyers’ and ‘activist blob of left-wing lawyers’ are ‘frequently used in discussions about immigration and asylum issues and practitioners’, the Immigration Lawyers Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) said.
On 8 August, the Home Office announced it was setting up a taskforce to crack down on “rogue solicitors” coaching “illegal migrants to lie” after the Daily Mail reported that a handful of lawyers were doing so.
The following week, the ILPA wrote to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister warning that “practitioners representing migrants are being targeted”.
“Lawyers must be able to carry out their professional duties without fear for their safety and with appropriate safeguards in place should their safety be threatened or compromised,” the letter said.
In response, the Home Office said it “regularly” reviews the language it uses on the “emotive” issues of asylum and immigration.
But Mr Makhlouf said this was “ridiculous”.
“The Home Office has taken a much more strident stance on social media in recent months, if not years… making sweeping judgements about categories of asylum seekers.
“We are concerned that people are buying into the rhetoric.”
He said BID had received threatening letters from the public when the government attempted to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, and lawyers “were then attacked for taking the cases to court”.
“We know that while asylum seekers are the focus of attack, lawyers are certainly at the forefront of the responsibility,” he said, adding that staff are “careful” about who they let into their London office.
Ms McKenzie said she still felt unsafe.
“I’m still security conscious. I’m still changing routes and looking around when I leave my house and especially when I leave the office quite late,” she said.
“It’s absolutely appalling that we now have to have security measures and briefings from the police and security companies just to do our jobs.
“This is unacceptable in Britain.”
Zoe Bantleman, ILPA’s legal director, said: “We are aware of a number of ILPA members who have been subjected to threats and abuse while trying to defend the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.
“We urge senior members of government, including the Prime Minister and Home Secretary, to lead by example and change their rhetoric so that practitioners representing some of the most vulnerable in society can carry out their professional duties without fear for their safety.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “While the majority of solicitors act with integrity – we know that some lie to help illegal migrants game the system. This is not right or fair to those who play by the rules.
“It is unacceptable for lawyers to be threatened for doing their job and we urge anyone who has been targeted to report it to the police.”
